Endoscopes are an essential tool in minimally invasive diagnosis and surgery. The maneuverability of an endoscope and it's suitability for accessing small and delicate regions of the body are in part determined by the size of the endoscope tip, which in turn is determined by the sizes of various components the tip contains. An endoscope tip may comprise an objective lens package containing lenses and spacers in a container, a prism, an imaging sensor array, and a plurality of lumens for containing fiberoptic bundles used for illumination, for transmitting fluid used for irrigation, for insufflation, for lens cleaning, or other purposes, and/or serving as working channels for delivering diagnostic and surgical tools to an intervention site.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,305,736 to Ito and U.S. Pat. No. 4,773,396 to Okazaki describe exemplary endoscope tip designs according to the methods of prior art, wherein camera and associated lenses are mounted together within an imaging housing, and that housing is placed within an endoscope tip.
Note is also taken of PCT publication WO 2006/080015, by Pinchas Gilboa entitled “Endoscope with Miniature Imaging Arrangement”, which describes another method of mounting lenses within a tip of a flexible endoscope.
Note is also taken of U.S. Pat. No. 5,418,566 to Kameishi, which describes an imaging apparatus for an endoscope, and of U.S. Pat. No. 5,188,092 to White, dated Feb. 23, 1993, which describes a rigid endoscope construction.
Disclosures of all the aforementioned patents and patent applications are incorporated herein by reference.